By Liz Garone
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 10, 2002; Page A03

BERKELEY, Calif., April 9 -- The black and white fliers posted
on
campus here today read, "1942. Poland." They bore photographs of men
and
children wearing Stars of David on their chests, of blindfolded
prisoners, of a mass grave. "Do not let it happen again," they said.

But the fliers were not about the Holocaust. They were a call
for
a rally by the Students for Justice in Palestine, demonstrating against
Israel's assault on Palestinian strongholds in the West Bank and Gaza
and seeking to end the University of California's investment in
companies doing business with Israel.

Several hundred students and community members gathered at
Sproul
Plaza for the noon rally. "One, two, three, four. No more aid for
Israel's war," they chanted, beneath Palestinian flags and a 15-foot
effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Berkeley was one of several campuses across the country where
pro-Palestinian protests were staged today -- the anniversary of the
deaths of more than 100 Palestinians at Deir Yassin during the 1948 war
for Israel's independence -- in a sign of what appears to be growing
student tension over the crisis in the Middle East.

"I find it particularly disgusting that the fliers for the
rally
were using images of the Holocaust," said Devora Liss, 20, a member of
Hillel, the Jewish student center on campus. "The images evoke emotions
with a naive student population that might not know any better."

Hillel was holding its own vigil about 50 yards from the
Palestinian rally. There, since Monday evening, members had been
quietly
reading aloud the names of Holocaust victims. Holocaust Remembrance
Day,
they explained, is set on the Jewish calendar, so it falls on a
different day of the Western calendar each year. This year, it was
April
9. "It's just an ugly coincidence," Liss said.

Far louder, across Sproul Plaza, was the Palestinian rally,
where
Jewish participants made a point of making themselves heard. "The
preciousness of human life is equal, so my feelings of anguish are not
more or less powerful for my ancestors than they are for the innocent
people dying in Palestine," said M.C. Ettinger, 26, director of an area
nonprofit who is a member of Jews for a Free Palestine and Students for
Justice in Palestine.

When Micah Bazant, another member of the latter group, tried to
recite a Hebrew prayer of mourning at the microphone, the words were
drowned out by students from the Israeli Action Committee, who booed
and
repeatedly shouted, "Shame."

Among those in attendance at the rally was Sanabel Fararja, 15,
a
Palestinian who has been stranded in California since the Academy
Awards
last month. She lives in a refugee camp outside Bethlehem and was
featured in the documentary "Promises," which was nominated for an
Oscar. "With the intifada going on in my home country, I don't have
hopes of peace," Fararja said. "But, seeing this today, I have hope in
my heart."

The rally is not the first example of campus tensions over the
conflict in the Middle East. On the first night of Passover,
anti-Israel
slogans were scrawled outside the Hillel center, and a brick was thrown
through its glass front door. Its doors, usually wide open, are now
locked, and everyone who enters is screened.

Palestinian students also say they have been targeted and
called
anti-Semitic. "I watch the faces of the people walking by our booth on
campus," said Abdul Zahzah, 25, a Palestinian raised in Lebanon now
studying mechanical engineering at Berkeley. "They remember the images
just after September 11, when the Palestinians were shown celebrating
and dancing in the streets. That's who they think we are now with
regard
to Israel."

Today's rally was no big deal by Berkeley standards and had
little in common with the famous protests of the 1960s, philosophy
professor John Searle said. "In those days, all students had specific
concerns about what was going on in Vietnam and the United States
government's responsibility. Today's events only appeal to those people
with a commitment to Israel or a commitment to Palestine," he said,
pointing out that many participants were not even students.

But he added that today's protest was larger than anything
during
the Persian Gulf War, when there was no protest movement to speak of at
Berkeley.